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He urges docs to focus on integrated care at 25th anniversary of NUH
 SENIOR Minister Goh Chok Tong has urged doctors to go beyond the confines of their specialities and work hand-in-hand with other doctors in treating patients.
Citing the example of a diabetic patient with eye and foot problems, Mr Goh said: “He would not want to be cared for by his endocrinologist, ophthalmologist and podiatrist, as if he had three unrelated problems.”
Similarly, health-care professionals such as the pharmacist, diabetes nurse clinician and dietician attending to him should work as a team with his care manager, Mr Goh added.
His call for integrated care was prompted, he said, by comments he had heard “that our doctors are sometimes too specialised and do not look at patients as a whole but only the specific problem they are treating”.
It is crucial for them to step across professional and organisational boundaries, said Mr Goh, as the holistic approach is how he envisions the future of medicine in Singapore.
He made the point yesterday at the National University Hospital’s 25th anniversary celebration, which was in some ways a journey back in time for Mr Goh.
He had, in 1986, inaugurated NUH, Singapore’s first restructured hospital, a year after it opened. He was then First Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, after relinquishing the Health portfolio.
A video of that day was shown last night at the dinner attended by 420 people, including 100 doctors and staff who had been with NUH since the start.
On viewing it, Mr Goh quipped: “Time has indeed flown before our eyes... I
could hardly recognise the gentleman who appeared at the NUH inauguration... except for his height.’’
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan was the hospital’s first chief executive officer. He recounted the early days in the preface of a coffee-table book on NUH, called 24/7, which Mr Goh launched last night.
Mr Khaw said the first team of clinical heads he gathered was made up of “creative rebels”, unafraid to make daring changes to the way a hospital should be run.
The $138 million hospital then, in its first phase, had about 450 beds. Today, it has about 1,000 beds with a staff strength of 5,500.
In his speech, Mr Goh also called on doctors to improve their interpersonal and communication skills, and play a bigger role in educating patients to stay healthy.
Similarly,nurses and other health-care professionals can do more too, he added. Nurses with advanced degrees and postgraduate qualifications can, for instance, initiate pre-treatment investigations and help develop health management plans.
By doing so, they will free doctors to focus on more complex cases and reduce waiting times for patients, he said.
As for NUH, Mr Goh encouraged it, among other things, to lead the way in measuring the clinical and cost-effectiveness of treatments.
Two NUH senior doctors were given the Emeritus Consultant Award for their contributions.
They are Professor Lee Eng Hin, 63, a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon who was honoured, among other things, for training young clinicians; and Associate Professor Peter George Manning, 63, an American who came here in 1994 and is now a Singapore citizen, who, among other achievements, built up NUH’s fledgling emergency department.
Prof Lee recalled how even cabbies did not know of NUH, which is in Clementi.
“So people wondered if we could survive... But very soon, we showed we were experts who could look after our patients,” he told The Straits Times.
Prof Manning said: “After I came, I immediately put senior doctors on the night shift, which was then manned by junior doctors. We were the first hospital in Singapore to do that. That’s important because patients don’t get sick only during office hours.”
This is now done in all hospitals here, he added.
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